ApeChain, an Ethereum layer-3 scaling solution built for the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) community and the broader Yuga Labs ecosystem, is bringing one of its services home. After days of anticipation, the project’s development team has migrated the ApeCoin NFT staking feature from the Ethereum blockchain to ApeChain.
Since its 2022 debut, ApeCoin ($APE) has emerged as a governance token for the BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and other projects within its ecosystem. However, only in October 2024 did ApeCoin DAO members launch ApeChain using the Arbitrum One technology. Since then, the project’s team has been migrating various services onto the new layer-3 mainnet.
The ApeCoin team revealed plans to migrate its NFT staking function to ApeChain earlier this month. Yuga Labs’ Vice President of Blockchain, 0xquit, explained that users must bridge their $APE holdings after withdrawing them from ApeStake, the platform where the staking activity initially occurred. He added that “staking on ApeChain won’t be geoblocked.” This implies that users from different countries, including the once-strict United States, can easily access the staking service on the new blockchain.
Shortly after the debut of the NFT staking service, ApeCoin shared a three-step process to guide users in migrating their holdings from Ethereum to ApeChain.
Until now, the ApeCoin NFT staking service has been open to BAYC and MAYC collections alone. On the other hand, the Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) collection must pair with any of these two collections before it can be staked. The Yuga Labs’ executive highlighted that there will now be a dedicated BAKC-only staking pool.
Notably, the NFT staking functionality is powered by Shadow NFTs, a concept pioneered by 0xquit that allows digital collectibles on a blockchain to become visible on other blockchain networks. Shadow NFTs can be owned solely by the holder of the original NFT.
In recent months, the BAYC-affiliated crypto project has delved deeper into the Web3 ecosystem. In October 2024, the project unveiled Ape Names, a Web3 domain service that allows users to change long addresses into readable names with a .APE suffix. Interestingly, the launch date of this service coincided with that of ApeChain, which was launched at ApeFest in Lisbon.
Bringing more of its services into ApeChain is ApeCoin’s way of providing its ape-loving community with the most utility. Time will tell which other service will be transported into the BAYC-linked blockchain within the coming months.
